Ross B. Mirkarimi, a spokesman at The Arms Control Research Centre stated:

""Unborn children of the region are being asked to pay the highest price, the integrity of their DNA.""
Prior to her death from leukemia in Sept. 2004, Nuha Al Radi , an accomplished Iraqi artist and author  of the ""Baghdad Diaries"" wrote:
""Everyone seems to be dying of cancer. Every day one hears about another acquaintance or friend of a friend dying.
One does not know how many more will die of cancer in hospitals?
Apparently, over thirty percent of Iraqis have cancer, and there are lots of kids with leukemia.""
""The depleted uranium left by the U.S. bombing campaign has turned Iraq into a cancer-infested country. For hundreds of years to come, the effects of the uranium will continue to wreak havoc on Iraq and its surrounding areas.""
This excerpt has written in her diary, in 1993, after Gulf War I (Approximately 300 tons of DU ordinance, mostly in desert areas) but before Operation Iraqi Freedom, (Est. 1,700 tons with much more near major population centers). 
So, it's 5-6 times worse than what it was when she wrote that diary entry!!  
That works out to over one million pounds of dust scattered throughout Iraq.
As a special advisor to the World Health Organization(WHO), the United Nations, and the Iraqi ministry of health, Dr. Ahmad Hardan has documented the effects of DU in Iraq between 1991 and 2002. 
""American forces admit to using over 300 tons of DU weapons in 1991.  The actual figure is closer to 800. 
This has caused a health crisis that has affected almost a third of a million people. 
As if that was not enough, the U.S.A. went on and used 200 tons more in Bagdad alone during the recent invasion.
I don""t know about other parts of Iraq, it will take me years to document that.
""In Basra, it took us two years to obtain conclusive proof of what DU does, but now we know what to look for and the results are terrifying.""
By far the most devastating effect is on unborn children. 
Nothing can prepare anyone for the sight of hundreds of preserved fetuses "" scarcely human in appearance.
Iraq is now seeing babies with terribly foreshortened limbs, with their intestines outside their bodies, with huge bulging tumors where their eyes should be, or with a single eye-like Cyclops, or without eyes, or without limbs, and even without heads.
Significantly, some of the defects are almost unknown outside textbooks, showing the babies born near A-bomb test sites in the Pacific.     Dr. Hardan also states:
""I arranged for a delegation from Japan's Hiroshima hospital to come and share their expertise in the field of radiological diseases that we are likely to face over time.
The delegation told me the Americans had objected, so they decided not to come.
Similarly, a world famous German cancer specialist agreed to come, only to be told later that he would not be given permission to enter Iraq.""
The U.S. Military are not only poisoning the people of Iraq and Afghanistan, but also are making a concerted effort to keep out specialists from other countries that can help. 
They don’t want the rest of the world to find out what a crime they have committed.
Such relatively swift development of cancers has been reported by doctors in hospitals, treating civilians following NATO bombing with DU in Yugoslavia in 1998-1999 and the US military invasion of Iraq using DU for the first time in 1991. Medical experts report that this phenomenon of multiple malignancies due to unrelated causes has been unknown up to now and is a new syndrome associated with internal DU exposure and toxicity.
Only 467 US personnel were wounded in the three-week Persian Gulf War in 1990-1991.
Out of 580,400 soldiers who served in Gulf War I, 11,000 have died, and by 2000 there have been 325,000 on permanent medical disability.
This astounding number of disabled veterans means that 56 percent of those soldiers who served in the first Gulf War have medical problems, a decade later.
Although not reported in the mainstream American press, a recent Tokyo tribunal, guided by the principles of international criminal law and international humanitarian law, found President George W. Bush guilty of war crimes.
On March 14, 2004, Nao Shimoyachi, reported in The Japan times that President George W. Bush was found guilty ""for attacking civilians with indiscriminate weapons and other arms,"" and the ""tribunal also issued recommendation ns for banning Depleted Uranium shells and other weapons that indiscriminately harm people."" 
Although this was a ""Citizen's Court"" having no legal authority, the participants were sincere in their determination that international laws have been violated and a war crimes conviction is warranted.
Troops involved in actual combat are not the only servicemen reporting symptoms.
Four soldiers from a New York army National Guard company serving in Iraq are among several members of the same company, the 442nd military police, who say they have been battling persistent physical ailments that began last summer in the Iraqi town of Samawah.
""I got sick instantly in June,"" said Staff Sgt. Ray Ramos, a Brooklyn housing cop.
""My health kept going downhill with daily headaches, constant numbness in my hands and rashes on my stomach.""
Dr. Asaf Durakovic, UMRC founder, and nuclear medicine expert who examined and tested nine soldiers from the company says that four ""almost certainly"" inhaled radioactive dust from exploded American shells manufactured with depleted uranium.
Laboratory tests revealed traces of two manmade forms of uranium in urine samples from four of the soldiers.
If so, the men - Sgt. Hector Vega, Sgt. Ray Ramos, Sgt. Agustin Matos and Cpl. Anthony Yonnone - are the first confirmed cases of inhaled depleted uranium exposure from the current Iraq conflict.
The 442nd, made up for the most part of New York cops, firefighters and correction officers, is based in Orangeburg, Rockland County.
Dispatched to Iraq in Easter of 2003, the unit's members had been providing guard duty for convoys, running jails and training Iraqi police.
The entire company is supposed to return home later this month.
In a group of eight U.S. led Coalition servicemen whose babies were born without eyes, seven are known to have been directly exposed to DU dust.
In a large group of 250 soldiers, exposed during the first Gulf war, 67% of the children conceived after the war had birth defects. 
Dr. Durakovic's UMRC research team also conducted a three-week field trip to Iraq in October of 2003.
He collected about 100 samples of substances such as soil, civilian urine and the tissue from the corpses of Iraqi soldiers in 10 cities, including Baghdad, Basra and Najaf.
Durakovic said: “Preliminary tests show that the air, soil and water samples contained hundreds to thousands of times the normal levels of radiation.”
""This high level of contamination is because much more depleted uranium has been used this year than in the Gulf War of 1991,"" Durakovic told The Japan Times.
""They are hampering efforts to prove the relation between Depleted Uranium and the illness,"" Durakovic said:
""They do not want to admit that they have committed war crimes, by using weapons that kill indiscriminately and are banned by international law.""
(Note about Dr. Durakovic;  Firstly, he was warned to stop his work, then he was fired from his position, then his house was ransacked, and he has also reported receiving death threats.
Evidently the U.S. D.O.D is very keen on censoring DU whistle- blowers!)
Dr. Durakovic, UMRC research associates Patricia Horan and Leonard Dietz, published a unique study in the August 2002 issue of military medicine medical journal.
The study is believed to be the first to look at inhaled DU among Gulf war veterans, using the ultrasensitive technique of thermal ionization mass spectrometry, which enabled them to distinguish between natural uranium and DU, easily. The study, which examined British, Canadian and U.S. veterans, all suffering typical Gulf war syndrome ailments, found that, nine years after the war, 14 of 27 veterans studied, had DU in their urine.
Dietz said in an interview that no governmental study has been done on inhaled DU ""amounts to a massive malpractice.”
The Japanese began studying DU effects in the southern Iraq in the summer of 2003.
They had a Geiger counter which they watched go off the scale on many occasions.
During their visit, a local hospital was treating upwards of 600 children per day, many of whom suffered symptoms of internal poisoning by radiation. 
600 children per day, how many of these children will get cancer and suffer early and painful death?
""Ingested DU particles can cause up to 1,000 times the damage of an X-ray"", said Mary Olson, a nuclear waste specialist and biologist at the nuclear information and resource service in Washington D.C.
(Source: globalresearch.ca) Researcher of depleted uranium, Horst Gunther, has now cancer himself.